Like the title suggests, I shall primarily talk about a particular aspect of a film, technical, creative or adapted; rather than scrutinize and provide an overall perspective or a diluted rundown of plot and acting.
Sometimes, but not always you might find an article about cricket or life in Bombay, India, squeezed amongst all the reel talk.
In that case, go watch a movie and visit another time.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

As I lay
with my leg in a cast on a terribly hot Bombay afternoon circa 1989, my misery fuelled
by boredom, mother in all her cheery wisdom slyly brought out an old keyboard
synthesizer.

I thought I had
stashed it away, quite craftily I might add, under a pile of old toys, school books,
and the partially inflated inner-tube of a truck.

The
synth-keyboard, a Casio model, was bright red, ergo very girly. The array of
buttons confused me. Worst of all, I was disappointed by the fact that I couldn’t
play every known song and masterpiece as soon as I turned it on and smacked
those keys. It was false advertising of the worst kind and the thing was
disobedient!

Mom was unperturbed.
She knew I couldn’t run away from this brainwave of hers. Moms can be tricky
that way. Then came the swift, verbal killing stroke, “Guess what, there’s a
piano teacher coming today, thought you could learn to play this instead of
just being miserable?”

The “teacher”
was a classically trained south Indian musician who ran a paan-shop (a tobacconist) and
moonlighted professionally as a keyboard player in an orchestra; at weddings,
birthdays, and pretty much every event in India wherein large crowds gather and
clamour for live music they request and then manically gyrate to.

“Ah, nice
red piano! Small, but will do. We learn, you get good for big piano.”

“Piano?”

“Ya, ya,
piano!”

He then hit
a few buttons, cracked his knuckles and lo and behold, the sounds of a piano
emerged from the tinny speaker.

***

Okay, he
sold me on the piano bit, because the only reason I’d begged and cried for a
synth-keyboard was my love for the piano.

A grand
piano was, and still is, one of the most regal instruments I’ve had to pleasure
to see, hear and feel up close.

And one of
my earliest memories of hearing and seeing classical piano stems from its depiction
in something quite unlikely, a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

Those
classic short animations did a fantastic job of incorporating the piano as part
of diegetic sound within the visuals, something that silent era live action
films still couldn’t achieve, though they relied heavily on a live or dubbed
piano soundtrack to support the visual narrative.

It would be
seen as a prop in live action, but it would take a few more years to actually
hear the on-screen piano in a live action film come to life believably.

While animation
shorts gave me a taste of western classical piano, my childhood movie staple
consisted entirely of good old Hindi films.

Now, in a
Hindi film and some regional Indian films too, the piano as a prop played quite
a few significant roles.